Go Behind the Scenes on Galaxy's Gravity-Shifting Ad

Rob Messeter, creative partner, AMV

What was the brief you received from Galaxy? How was this campaign an evolution of the previous Cupid film?

The brief was a global one. Galaxy (or Dove in the US, China and Middle East) were looking for an idea that would connect with women across many markets, not just the UK. For Mike (Crowe, my copywriter partner) and I, we wanted to get away from the clichés of chocolate advertising. So even though it needed to feel part of the same family as previous work, it was also time for a step change in tone. Something more contemporary.

The woman in the spot comes across as a very modern iteration of the ‘Galaxy woman’ – how did you approach casting?

We wanted to move away from using models and instead find a great actress. Jade [Anouka] was exactly that. She had a gorgeous personality, a spark about her, something that made her incredibly compelling. She had a fantastic energy too. We felt she could handle the physical side of the project, because it was a demanding shoot and in fact she very much rose to the challenge.

Why did you decide to represent/interpret the demands on time – social media, emails and games –  in this way? What might a potential fourth or fifth carriage be filled with?

Often chocolate advertising patronises its audience, we didn’t want to do that. We wanted instead to ground the film in an insight. The idea that in our modern world, the hold that technology has on us, it’s increasingly difficult to focus on just one thing. But when you give something your full attention you get more from it. Be that a conversation, a box set or a piece of Galaxy chocolate.

What would a potential fourth or fifth carriage be? Hmmm, now there’s a noodler. Maybe emojis? Or a mass of texts from her mum? Something Tinder-y?

Why was Sam Pilling the right director for the job?

Again, Mike & I wanted to approach things differently from normal chocolate commercials. So, a younger director with a music video background was something we looked for. We’d been following Sam’s career for a number of years and had tried to get him on other projects, but nothing had stuck. But this time things worked out.  

You can see from his reel he has great taste. He can handle big scale productions. He had an attitude to his work. And from our meetings with him he was very collaborative and understood exactly the vision we had. He had also just done our favourite music video of last year, DJ Shadow’s Nobody Speak (feat. Run the Jewels). Featuring a random pig. Everyone loves a random pig.

What was the most challenging aspect of the process?

Well in truth, there were challenges all along the way. Mike and I had already spent seven months in competition with other BBDO offices around the network to get this script over the line. We’d written over a hundred scripts. Then the production itself threw up many challenges. Building four carriages (one fully rotating). Writing and sticking up 200,000 Post-It notes. All in a giant hangar just outside Bucharest, with a crew who only spoke Romanian.

Sam Pilling, director

What appealed to you about the script?

When I first read the script, I was struck by how visually arresting and compelling the idea could be. I loved the social insight behind it and after speaking with Mike, Rob and Trish at AMV, it was clear that they wanted to create something that was purposefully removed from typical chocolate advertising clichés. Instead the emphasis was to create something that was contemporary and full of attitude, with a strong female lead. This was music to my ears, and we all agreed that the film should be approached from a more naturalistic, filmic perspective, rather than a glossy, commercial one.

A huge amount of work went into the set build/design, including a carriage filled with 200,000+ sticky notes. How long did that take?

After production designer David Lee’s designs were signed off, the set took the best part of seven weeks to build.  Adi Popa and his construction team worked like troopers to get it done in time to meet our very tight deadline, but the final effect was amazing. When I first walked on to the finished set, it felt like I was standing in a real train carriage. The attention to detail, right the way down to the safety stickers, seat fabric and patina on the windows, really brought the train carriages to life.

The production design obviously goes hand-in-hand with the lighting, and DP Pat Scola, and his gaffer Matt Kubas, spent a lot of time researching and testing how they were going to create the different lighting effects for each carriage. This complex lighting set-up was another essential part of the set and really helped to create the illusion that we were on a real train. 

Then there were the sticky notes… Let’s just say I’d be glad if I never saw another sticky note again! Schedule-wise we filmed Jade’s journey in chronological order, which meant on Day 1 the static carriage was completely normal, but on Day 2 it was filled with the sticky-notes. A crew of 40 set-dressers worked through the night transforming the carriage, and they were still sticking the final notes up as we arrived to set the next day. I’m incredibly grateful to them for working so hard to make it happen.  Seeing the transformation that happened overnight was pretty mind blowing. Then seeing them all get ripped out again at the end of the day was pretty tough.

Which was the hardest scene to shoot?

Probably the last carriage, where gravity shifts and Jade tumbles down an Alice in Wonderland style tunnel amongst a wave of cascading video game icons. In order to film this in-camera we built one of the train carriages on a pivot so that we could tilt it to a 45-degree angle. Our actor Jade could then slide down the carriage on wires whilst the gaming icons (essentially soft beach balls) tumbled down around her. We had a mechanism at the top of the carriage to release the balls and our camera was either rigged on an iBeam or on a sort of make-shift surfboard, so that it could move with Jade as she fell. For the shot to work, all the elements had to happen in synch.  Needless to say, this was a huge logistical and practical challenge. In fact, right from the start of the project, the idea of having an actor sliding down a tilted carriage floor with chairs on either side, whilst raised 20 foot in the air was something that raised several eyebrows.  It involved many discussions, brainstorming sessions and meticulous planning between producer Arlene McGann, all the heads of departments and our stunt coordinator Jim Dowdall.

On the day, there was a huge amount of testing, rehearsing and communication needed to ensure it all worked. The reset times after each ‘fall’ were very long, and it took several takes to get the actual timing cues right. It was the last day of shooting and we were well behind our shooting schedule so the pressure was on. In the end we only got two useable takes but thankfully that was enough and all the thought, time and effort was worth it!

Why did you choose to shoot as much as possible in-camera?

There was always going to be a fair amount of VFX needed in the film (from window compositing to the CGI bird) but I think VFX works the best when it’s used in conjunction with what is captured in camera and knowing that there were certain elements that simply had to done in post, I wanted to make sure that everything that we could shoot in camera, we did.

Given the short timeframe for the production (without rehearsal days or shooting time to do multiple takes) my feeling from the offset was that we would get a better performance from our actor if she had physical objects to respond to - like the swirling post-it notes or the video game icons / balls bouncing around her. In fact when you stood in the train carriage full of sticky notes, it created quite a magical feeling, and I think this is evident in Jade’s performance.

The sticky note scene was a bit of an unknown and no-one was entirely sure how the floating notes would work, so we had originally planned to embellish some of these in CGI.  In the end, we managed to capture it all in camera which felt pretty satisfying all round.

We had originally wanted to capture the floating video game icons in-camera, but it soon materialised that this wasn’t going to work properly or be visually impressive enough.  At the very last minute we made the call to do the first part of the carriage in post, which meant Pat Scola, Framestore VFX supervisor Chris Redding and I had to carefully and quickly work out exactly how many shots (or how few) we needed to make the sequence work.

The shoot involved a technique pioneered in Inception, tell us a bit more about that.

We built a carriage that rotated 360 degrees round and round. This was essentially a smaller scale version of the hallway set used in Inception, which was first used by Fred Astaire in his film Royal Wedding in 1951. Everything had to be bolted down and made secure so that nothing would fall off when the carriage went upside-down, and so that our actor could safely scramble over and put her weight on every part of the carriage if she needed to. Thousands of sticky notes were stuck to the entire interior of the carriage, then we had hundreds more that were scattered loosely around so that they created a tumble-dryer or snow-globe effect once the carriage was spinning round. This scene required the most amount of planning, construction time, research, and rehearsing.

Our stunt double, Maria Hippolyte, was originally going to do the action, but Jade was adamant that she wanted to try.  Jim Dowdall and Maria helped choreograph Jade’s movements, enabling her to move around the carriage both safely and in a visually engaging way. Jade ran through the carriage as it spun at five revolutions a minute, with wind machines blowing hundreds of sticky notes all over her, as our techno crane telescoped towards her at speed. All captured 100% in camera. Epic! The whole process took a lot of trial and error, but the fact that Jade did all the stunts herself meant we were never having to cut around the action. 

What, in your opinion, was the most challenging aspect of the process?

Being on the set itself. The train carriage was long, thin and incredibly hot, which meant moving about, changing angles, swinging a lens, adjusting art department (even closing the door!) became quite challenging. After three long days on a train carriage with 30 odd crew members packed together like sardines, we were all going a bit loopy! Massive shout out to Paul McCann, our 1st AD (who gets quote of the shoot with: “I’m not f***ing Walt Disney!”) and Ovidiu Paunescu, our Romanian 1st AD who both did an incredible job of keeping the production on track.